What do you do when you have several goals – and they don’t compliment each other? For example, one of my goals is to feed my family healthy meals. By itself, that’s not too difficult to accomplish. But, another goal is to reduce debt; and buying healthier foods – whole, and preferably organic ingredients that don’t come from a can (we’re avoiding BPA’s, too) – is more expensive than buying processed foods. In the past, I might have given up because it was too hard to figure out how to accomplish conflicting goals. I don’t want to give up this time. My health and my family’s health is too important – I can’t quit.

I’ve found that I have had to learn how to compromise – which isn’t always easy for this “all or nothing” girl. I try to research the various options and decide what the best choice is for our family right now. So that means that I have a few cans in my cupboard – pumpkin for making bread and adding to smoothies, chopped green chilis for making chili, sweetened condensed milk for making coffee creamer, and tuna for the occasional tuna sandwich. And I just used the last can of cranberry sauce from the holidays. Those are pretty much the only things I buy in cans. I’m going to try preserving pumpkin and chili peppers when they’re in season, so hopefully this time next year there will be even fewer cans in my cupboard.

Is using even those canned foods ideal? Probably not. However, I’ve made some healthy changes already – using dried beans instead of canned, preserving peaches from the farmers’ market instead of buying them canned, and making more nutritionally sound food choices. I can live with using a few (very few!) canned foods.

I’ve found that a little creativity and the willingness to compromise has helped me to make a lot of progress on my journey to healthier living – and to have fun in the process 🙂

Disclaimer: I feel compelled to add that there are many things for which there is a definite right and wrong and those things shouldn’t be compromised; that’s not the kind of compromise that I’m talking about here.

Hi, I'm Kate - welcome to my little corner of the world wide web! I'm just a simple girl who loves Jesus and is trying to live my life His way. Do I get it right most of the time? Unfortunately, no. Do I wish I got it right more often than I do? Absolutely! And so I keep trying to be more like Him with every new day and every new choice. This blog is about my journey with Him - and about some things I do while trying to live my life His way.